A much delayed post, so apologies for that, but here we are!
A month ago I decided to return to one of my middle grade (MG) manuscripts (MS) to give it a read through after letting it sit untouched for three months. As I mentioned before, I often can’t help myself when it comes to fixing things right away. The proper exercise is to read the book in one-two sittings to take in the MS as a whole and not edit anything. Well…I modified that to help my compulsive need to tinker with everything. Here’s how it went.
First of all, I couldn’t get through the book in one sitting. I work long hours and so I didn’t have the focus or energy to read it all in one day. Reading it all the way through is exhausting, but it’s also the best way to see the book as a whole. In the future, I’d like to accomplish this, but at least I finished my MS in three days, so that’s a win for me!
Second, I gave myself permission to fix grammar issues and odd sentence structure as needed. This also makes sense since I’m usually bad at catching spelling errors (#SpellCheckIsMyBFF) so if I saw one it’s taken care of! I also limited myself to fixing occasional sentence structure so I could get the need to edit out of my system without making too many changes. As I said, this exercise is for the Big Picture. There are months of small picture edits ahead of me!
Third, and most helpful, I made notes in the margins. This was very helpful since there were chapters and paragraphs I thought would work better in a different section, but I didn’t want to take time away from reading the book as a whole to fix these issues. (On the flip side, some edits I made a note of to change, I realized a paragraph later that my original writing made more sense. I should trust my past-writer self, even if I think my present-writer self is more competent.) Now I have a blueprint of what order I want the events in, AND other comments of what to add/delete to keep the story moving. I highly recommend doing this if you’re waiting to come back to an old MS.
All in all, I considered my editing venture a success. I’m sure my method isn’t perfect, but for me it’s a step in the right direction. The writing process is long and tedious, and I’m always looking for ways to fine-tune my process to make it more efficient. The next time I let a MS sit and come back to it, I’m planning to continue applying what I used in my MG MS and hope to continue to develop a great editing rhythm that works for my writing style.
Linnea Garcia 